James Packer and David Gyngell are the bearers of a singular tradition in Sydney’s media battleground: real blokes settle things with their fists, assuming a bullwhip or a revolver isn’t handy.

The kerbside stoush between the two former friends reminds those with a sense of history that Sydney’s media barons and bosses have long caused some of the city’s most fabulous front-page stories through their propensity to go the biff.

James Packer’s father Kerry, along with Kerry’s brother Clyde, were involved in a marvellous late-night brawl in 1960 with a gang of thugs hired by Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch was determined to evict the Packers from the premises of the Anglican Press, which owned a printing plant that held the key to control of Sydney’s newspapers.

Advertisement

The Daily Mirror subsequently published, beneath the screaming headline ‘‘Knight’s Son in City Brawl’’, a picture of Clyde Packer tossing a one-legged clergyman into the street. The Packers lost the stoush. Kerry, a former schoolboy heavyweight boxing champion, was clouted with a six-by-four timber post and Clyde reportedly suffered a wound from a dart to the buttocks. Murdoch is supposed to have orchestrated events via two-way radio from the safety of a nearby park.

Kerry and Clyde’s father, Sir Frank Packer, had previously found himself in a celebrated dispute involving fisticuffs with the colourful media tycoon Ezra Norton. Packer, owner of the Daily Telegraph, and Norton, who ran Truth, had been trading verbal and newspaper-article blows before meeting at Randwick Racecourse on Derby Day in 1939.

Norton was infuriated that the Daily Telegraph had been publishing unflattering photographs of him. He hauled off and thumped Packer when they came across each other in the racecourse bar, and a ding-dong ensued. Norton was forced to apologise to the Australian Jockey Club committee because he had thrown the first punch.

He retaliated by publishing in the Truth photographs of Packer at the races in his uniform as a captain in the AIF, with the sneering caption ‘‘Captain Packer will be leaving for the front soon’’.

Ezra Norton’s father, also a newspaper owner with an anger management problem, was considered the original wild man of the Sydney media. His story, in fact, is among the more rollicking within the chronicles of a book named The Wild Men of Sydney written in 1958 by Cyril Pearl.

Norton, in the 1890s, got himself into a ‘‘cheap display of fisticuffs’’ in King Street, Sydney, one evening with William Willis, the Member for Bourke and a co-founder with Norton of Truth, and a Mr W.B. Melville, former secretary to the NSW Premier.

As matters escalated, Willis reportedly tried to whip Norton with his cane, but hit a bystander instead. Norton set upon Willis and allegedly bit into his ear, though Norton - in a letter to the Evening News - denied it.

‘‘I am depicted as diligently endeavouring to masticate one of Mr Willis’ ears. I neither bit nor attempted to bite Willis or either of my two other assailants,’’ he wrote.

But Norton wasn’t finished with politicians. Some years later, he accused the Member for Tweed, Richard Meagher, as a premier perjurer and ‘‘the champion criminal of the continent’’.

Meagher armed himself with a greenhide bullwhip and ambushed Norton as he emerged from Her Majesty’s Theatre in Pitt Street. Norton drew his revolver, ran after Meagher and let fly, missing his target. Meagher was later fined five pounds and Norton was acquitted, though both had a fine time insulting each other in court. Meagher reportedly accused Norton of being a ‘‘scaly scurvy contemptible viper’’. Norton responded with ‘‘You skunk!’’ and ‘‘You’re a beautiful bludger from a brothel.’’

James Packer and David Gyngell may have given it their best on Sunday, but they would appear still to have a way to go to outdo the champion wild men of the Sydney media.